In 2018 Lithuania is celebrating the 100 years anniversary of the Republic of Lithuania together with the anniversary of the Republic of Latvia. We are very happy to present you the international artistic collaboration project, supported by the European Commission Programme Creative Europe, with its project leader the Lithuanian early music ensemble Canto Fiorito to be implemented in European countries during the course of 2018 – Lithuania’s anniversary year.

THE BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hansa) was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. It dominated maritime trade in the North and Baltic Seas between 1300 and 1700, with trade routes that extended from London to Tallinn, enabling vast commercial and cultural exchange. The capital of the Hansa was the German city of Lübeck, with countless member cities spread across modern-day Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Belgium, Belarus and England. The League reached its zenith in the XV and XVI century and only began to decline in the second half of the XVII century.

CONCERT PROGRAMME

Via a widely know historical phenomena of the Hanseatic League, this project aims to raise the interest of the contemporary society in a shared European cultural heritage and attract new early music audiences, especially children and youth. A specially created concert program represents composers from each Hansa country chronologically, in a simulated journey through space and time - XVI-XVII centuries, which were the most significant times in the activities of the League. The programme includes widely known composers like Hyeronimus Praetorius, Heinrich Schütz, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and great, but less know composers from smaller European countries like Bartlomiej Pekiel, Giovanni Battista Cocciola, Johann Valentin Meder etc.

PERFORMERS

The project is performed by the Lithuanian ensemble Canto Fiorito, with its artistic leader Rodrigo Calveyra, a renown cornett and recorder player, and the Austrian early music ensemble Musica Antiqua Salzburg, the main early music of its city. Both ensembles are specialized in renaissance-baroque music, ensuring historically informed recreation and performance of music from the Hanseatic League. Five voices of Canto Fiorito are complemented by five historical wind instruments of Musica Antiqua Salzburg in a perfect combination, typical to the music of those times, completed by organ’s basso continuo.